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Monday, May 16, 2016

My Precious Stuff

by Joesph
O’Day

Inside a bureau drawer in my parents’ dining
room, there’s a grayed envelope filled with old pictures. I take it in hand and
wonder if I should do a quick flip-through, a close inspection, or store it for
later. Maybe I should just throw it out, since I’m already overloaded with
photos.

I’ve taken this August week off from work to
clear my mother’s house and prepare it for
sale. Since Dad’s death twenty years ago, Mom has lived alone in this large
two-family, until the need for permanent nursing home care forced her to leave.
At this moment, this first day of cleanout, the house’s sole occupants are seven
decades worth of stuff, a testament to my family’s distaste for letting things
go.

I inspect the envelope. Hidden beneath familiar
prints are five 2 x 3 color photos, a family series—my mother and father, and Dad’s
mother, father, sister and brother. They’re dressed formally, perhaps having been
to church or a wedding. The day is sunny and dry, the background, the Salem
Willows. My favorite is of Dad and Mom together. Dad’s in suit and tie, his arm
around her waist. Mom’s in high heels and yellow dress, nestled into his side.
They smile broadly. The date stamped on back is 1946. A year prior, my father had
completed his World War II tour as an Army Medic. They’ll marry in three years,
have my sister and me in eight. Mom told me how shy my father was when they dated.
He was exactly what she wanted, a gentleman, quiet and mild-mannered, not savvy
with women, physically strong and courageous. And a non-drinker; she’d witnessed
enough alcoholism in her young life to want alcohol out completely. It’s a beautiful
photo, something I’ll always treasure.

Realizing how close I came to trashing these
pictures, I resolve to take the time necessary to scrutinize everything, even if
it means making a clearinghouse of my own

home. I
begin packaging items using any containers I can find, including old wooden
boxes having the musty smell of dust and grime.

On the second night, I wake up at two am in a
panic, wondering if I’d discarded my little wooden bank, the one Mom gave me in
grammar school. I rarely used it and forgot it existed until I touched it
yesterday. But now I want it not to be gone, want it in place

until I decide
its fate. When I search the dumpster the next morning to no avail, I know it’s
gone for good.

I discover the palm-size stainless steel transistor
radio I used to listen to Boston Celtics games in the era of John Havlicek,
Bill Russell, Sam Jones. I’d hide under my bed covers late at night so my parents
wouldn’t know I was awake, our home team’s

The ceramics. For years I witnessed my mother’s
pride arriving home from ceramics class each week, carrying creations that
would accompany us the next forty years. The beige French poodles, the small
black dog, the big white cat. The basketball-size green

turtle and frog, set on their respective parlor
end tables. I’d sit between them having intimate conversations with my father
about problems and sports and colleges and

career choices. My mother would listen from the
kitchen, preparing supper, shouting out perspectives and advice.

A friend tells me there’s a
term for my style of house clearing. “Hoarding,” she says. “It’s called hoarding.”

A
cousin stops by offering to sell items at the flea market. When I mention I’ll
keep the old kitchen set, he looks at Kris and says, “He’s bad!”

A month after the house is cleared, we’re walking
with a friend on a sandy street towards his Hampton Beach cottage. Kris
discloses objects I’ve brought to ourhouse,

underscoring how movers let slip my mother’s “sixty-year-old”
couch, causing it to tumble down her staircase, tear off four balusters, and
make her cry.

His advice, gathered from experience with his
own parents’ house, is to “Throw everything
into a dumpster.”

“But I want to preserve memories.”

“That’s what pictures are for.”

The pictures. Thumbing through my parents’
wedding album, I find several that I’ve seen for decades displayed throughout
the house. I find others, less familiar, that seem more candid, more real. A
young woman readies herself for marriage with friends, sharing her last moments
of singlehood. Mom’s sister holds open a limousine door to help her exit, both
of them so young, so happy, so hopeful. Dad and Mom kneel at the altar,
expressions solemn, focused on the Priest’s instructions, making sure they’re
getting things right. Mom laughs at a man’s comments in the reception line while
Dad, standing next to her, wipes his lower lip. These do more than preserve
memories. They broaden the picture of my parents’ lives, allowing me to view
them in new ways, making me want to keep every
photo, not just the flawless ones.

Day five. I can’t believe the pain I feel going
through my parents’ belongings. I find letters from my father to Mom from
overseas during the war, saying she certainly is not a pest, writing so much. I
find items they especially valued in her cedar chest: my mother’s wedding
garter, her wedding crown, the top of their wedding cake. When I show the top
of the cake to Kris, she says it’s nothing special. I know she means it isn’t a
special one; probably inexpensive, unremarkable. But to me, it is
special. It’s the top of the cake that celebrated their joining. How can I
eliminate something that was such an important part of their lives? Where is
the utensil Dad used to bang the pipe to wake me early weekend mornings so I’d
work with him at the carwash? Can I save it and somehow bring him back, just
for a moment, just for the time it takes to tell him how much I love him, to
hug him and not let go?

In a tender moment last night, after a tiring day,
Kris told me that I have my memories and carry my parents inside. To take a few
things of theirs and call it a day. “Filling up our house doesn’t bring them
back.”

In the end, although I keep many of their
possessions, including the turtle and frog, I relinquish countless others. I
donate the kitchen set to the Vietnam Veterans of America, pieces of furniture
to the Salvation Army, unsalvageables to the dumpster.

On the seventh day, except for a few remnants (refrigerators,
electric stoves, leftover furnishings), the house is empty—old white paneled
walls and ceiling lights with burned out bulbs and worn rugs with holes.

I do multiple final walkthroughs, stepping into
each room, recalling scenes past. I’m in the cathedral ceiling attic and see my
father as a boy, living in one of two unheated bedrooms, leaving a closet door open
on winter nights, stealing warmth from the heated floor below. I see him years
later, arriving home late one night, unannounced, on army leave, not wanting to
disturb his family, sneaking up the back stairs to his attic room, getting
discovered by his English Setter, Buddy’s frenetic barking causing his mother,
father, and sister to wake, to join in on the dog’s jumping and kissing and
welcoming home.

I take the back stairs to the cellar, see my
father in retirement puttering with plumbing and wiring and furnaces, wearing
coveralls that were his uniform for twenty-five years at his car wash. I see
him on his last day of life, interrupted by my three-year-old daughter’s
request to come outside through the bulkhead and witness her rope jumping
prowess… one jump, stop… one jump, stop, her brown curly hair bouncing up and
down,my wife telling me how he laughed his wonderful, blissful laugh.

___________

The house will be sold “as is” on a Friday in
October. The Sunday before closing, I check it one last time. Garages, attic,
cellar, first floor—all clear. Second floor—clear, except for a lone paper
scrap on a kitchen shelf. I lift and turn it over, discover it’s my grandfather
John J. O’Day’s funeral mass card. He died on August 11, 1955, a year after I
was born. He’d known me for a year but I would never know him, except in stories
my father told, and in memorabilia I’ve recovered: his gold pocket watch; his winter
police coat with its brass Salem Police buttons; his policeman’s badge; the silver
Mayor’s Cup he won in 1916 for being the force’s best marksman; photos of him
directing traffic, of him sitting comfortably in a yard chair outside the house
he purchased in the early 1900s and would pass on to my father. I place his
mass card inside my shirt breast pocket. I want to protect it until I can get
home and add it to my valuables.

Joseph O’Day obtained his BA and MBA from Salem State University and BS
from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. He has served as
the Director of Pharmacy at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital since 1998.
He has taken several graduate writing courses and is a long-standing member of
Salem Writers’ Group. His writing focuses on the personal essay form, exploring
family relationships and life transitions. Besides pharmacy and writing, he
enjoys athletics and spending time with his family.